[Peace] Major New Study Blasts Media Coverage of WMDs

[Kranich, Kimberlie]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0309-12.htm
Published on Tuesday, March 9, 2004 by Editor & Publisher
Major New Study Blasts Media Coverage of WMDs
by E&P Staff

NEW YORK -- A new study of how the media has covered the issue of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD), released today, concludes, "Many stories
stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspectives on
WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the
events, issues, threats and policy options."

The other three main conclusions of the study conducted by the Center for
International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and the University of
Maryland: Too few stories offered alternative perspectives to the "official
line" on WMD surrounding the Iraq conflict; most journalists accepted the
Bush administration linking the "war on terror" inextricably to the issue of
WMD; and most media outlets represented WMD as a "monolithic menace" without
distinguishing between types of weapons and between possible weapons
programs and the existence of actual weapons.

The complete study, directed by Susan Moeller and titled "Media Coverage of
Weapons of Mass Destruction (.pdf)," is available at the CISSM Web site.
The authors of the study state that, "Poor coverage of WMD resulted less
from political bias on the part of journalists, editors, and producers than
from tired journalistic conventions." They also declare that the British
media "reported more critically on public policy than did their American
colleagues."

In a foreword to the study, John Steinbruner, director of the center,
writes: "The American political system is in the early stages of contending
with an unwelcome but ultimately unavoidable problem. The United States
initiated war against Iraq on the basis of an inaccurate representation of
the scope and immediacy of the threat posed, and it did so without
international authority. That has prejudiced the legitimacy of the
occupation, thereby undermining the single most important ingredient of
successful reconstruction."

He adds that "the American media did not play the role of checking and
balancing the exercise of power that the standard theory of democracy
requires."

Among those writers singled out for praise in the study are Barton Gellman,
Walter Pincus, Michael Getler and Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, Bob
Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, and David Sanger and William Broad of The
New York Times. It also cites articles in E&P by William Jackson Jr.
exploring Judith Miller's controversial WMD coverage in the New York Times.




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